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Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Here at the Hassan household we are DIEHARD short bread
fans, so when I came across this elegant biccy over at Poires Au Chocolat, I knew
that I needed something similar to fill my council house with buttery, vanilla-ry
wafts that were coming from the oven. As Poires mentions, the short bread
tasted much better the day after baking, giving the thin little shorty’s time
to come into their own, crunchy short selves. Tonight, I am tired – I have traveled the earth and back on every possible tube and train existing in London
so I will keep it short. Hope you enjoy my pictures; they were taken in dim 5pm
daylight which explains why they are so godamn awful.

Friday, 26 October 2012

I think there’s something in the oven/Kenwood. This time
round, I’m tackling something else that has gone horribly wrong…cream cheese *sulk*
icing. It goes without saying that when you make one mistake, you put it under the
carpet and carry on trying. But when you make a second, (cringe shields at the
ready) feelings of self-doubt start to pave their way in.

I definitely thought
about avoiding this post altogether, but then I thought about how many times I haven’t
been satisfied with my cream cheese icing, so it was inevitable…I just had to learn from my mistakes. The
icing was poured atop the all-London
Curly Whirly Cake made from a Konditor & Cookrecipe found here, the
picture of the cake is what I aimed for…Decoration wasn’t even an option after
this disaster went down! But try not to be fooled, the cake was densely satisfying!

I’ve wrote about some
of the things I think will help you not to achieve this big, runny, gloopy
mess. Here we go (again):

Straining

Its
absolutely necessary to strain your packets of cream cheese before you add it
to the mixing bowl because extra fluid will contribute to a runny mess. Get rid
of all that curdled juice by dangling the packet over the sink, your cream
cheese is solid at this point (and hopefully will stay that way) so you don’t have
to worry about it falling out of the packet!

Above Room
Temperature

There is no baking rule that your cream cheese has to be at room temperature, do not
treat it like you would butter and eggs. As long as it’s not straight out of
the fridge, you won’t have a problem like I did. Let the packets rest at a room
temperature for a maximum of ten minutes.

Beating

Now, the
recipe I used instructed that I melted the butter and added it to my already
whipped cream cheese and icing sugar. Naturally, you’re going to assume that that’s
where I went wrong, right? Wrong. The cream cheese had already loosened into a
form of gloppy-ness before I added the butter! This is because I mixed the cream cheese and icing for too
long at too high a speed. You can avoid over beating by whipping room temperature
butter and all of the icing sugar until pale and fluffy, and then adding the cream cheese. This will
give you a thick cream cheese, but one with a dominant buttery flavour which isn’t very
nice, so to avoid this altogether take a look at my next pointer.

Meringue powder

Forget
for a moment that meringue powder adds a crusting quality to your icing and
listen up. Adding 2 tbsp. to 1 batch works chemical wonders
into your icing, it will give it pipe-able and spreadable stability. Also, the great
thing about this cheesy trick is that it won't give off any bad flavours
either, it will simply stop your cream cheese icing from looking like mine
does, which none of you want, surely!

Whipped cream

Another
great tip which I’ve yet to try yet is adding whipped cream to your cream
cheese. This not only gives height, fluffiness and stability to your icing, but
also, I think, would give a better flavour! Whip some double cream together and
simply fold it into your icing. Also, if you don’t want to regurgitate a
rainbow - remove 1 tsp vanilla extract from your recipe and replace with 1 tsp
fresh lemon juice, this will also keep your icing from having an off-white
look.

Saturday, 20 October 2012

Its time for me to showcase my most recent kitchen disaster
to you, baking is never all about success and I don’t do enough to emanate what
I could have done better. So far it’s been all about how good something tastes
and never how I could have improved on some ill-defined quality that really
would have benefited in some extra care towards it. So here it is. The ugliest,
wrinkles’ ridden macaron that looks exactly like a wart that has been flattened
with a PME rolling pin. I thought I would
outline some/ALL of the things that (I think) went wrong here, in bullet
points, so that if you’re thinking of making some at home and are now worried
that you might produce some warts, you can read this and hopefully turn those unattractive,
alright tasting maca-macas into elegant, crunchy and then soft and gooey
delights.

Did you think it was a whoopie pie?!

Why don’t my macarons have feet?

My suspicion is that not
enough air was beaten into my macarons, and in addition, when I did the
almighty ‘double tap’ to remove air pockets, I actually removed the very last
bits of air that my poor macarons were holding onto for dear life. I’ve read
that adding a touch of cream of tartar to the egg whites will stabilise them,
thus calls for a sturdier meringue, equals better raising agent! Take a look at my first ever attempt at macarons, they're just as ugly but they do have feet. Also, make
sure your egg whites are at room temperature, I don’t know why exactly but I do
know that mine derived from the fridge straight to the bowl (please look at
pictures if you still need convincing).

Why aren’t my macarons shiny and smooth?

This is the big one;
so many factors will cause your macarons not to have that perfect French finish.
Exhibit A: the almonds. If they’re not miraculously fine in texture and sieved
once or twice, you will not have a shiny macaron. The recipe I used only
specified that I should sieve the icing sugar and ground almonds together so
that they’re smooth, later I read that you should always add these to the food
processer, and thin the life out of them with the blade setting. This will
create a spectacularly smooth batter, and why is this important? If you have a
smooth batter, your macarons will form a skin when they are resting - they must
rest for at least 20 minutes at room
temperature – and when the macarons are baked, that skin will be the sole
reason behind why your macarons suddenly have that mirror-shine top, as well as
that yummy crunch, followed by gooey middle.

Why aren’t my macarons all the same size?

The most
embarrassing thing of all is that I actually used this really helpful template to make
sure each macaron carried excellent uniformity, but as there wasn’t enough air
incorporated into my little disasters, all of the macarons spread in an uneven
manner all over the baking parchment, causing oblong/rectangular/spherical
rounds. In other words, if the macarons baked upwards instead of sidewards,
they would have all been perfectly circular with the help of a template (or
macaron matt).

The macarons dont look at disastrous from this angle, aye?

I hope this answers some of your macaron queries, I’m not
going to give the recipe on this occasion, I’m going to wait until my macarons look
like gods and goddesses so that I can actually justify a recipe post.

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

It is so easy to turn a simple cupcake into something
with much more depth and meaning behind it than it had say...10 minutes ago,
when it was just a little light sponge with a rich and heavy
buttercream and a 1m-attack perched & splurged right on top of it.

Sky Poker Dice

So when I made
cupcakes for Russell to take to work with him at Sky Sports (obviously,
I wanted to make him look like an even bigger goodie too shoes), I was
delighted to have been approached by the guys over at Sky Poker, asking if I’d
be willing to do the same thing for them, but with a poker theme. At no point
was I going to deny such a project, so I put my baking cap on and
started drawing poker chips that I could eventually translate into cookies, and
some cupcakes like the ones I mentioned above, only with rice paper carefully
inserted into its soft and simple swirl.

Sky Poker Cupcakes and Dice

My first instinct for these bakes was to go for the initial Sky reds and blues as found in these cupcakes. But then I started to really think
about it, and realised that I weren't just baking cakes for the broad spectrum
that is Sky Sports, but instead was presenting bakes for Sky Poker, a less
broad and more subject related area of Sky. So as long as I had some pungently
coloured red and blue poker chips in there, I was happy (and hopefully so was Sky Poker!)!

Sky Poker Chips

Flavours are consistently vanilla based throughout both of these bakes; I went
for the classic cupcake which can be found here. Then moving onto the cookies,
I used Peggy Porschen’s Sugar Cookie (couldn’t leave my shiny new bespoke book
hanging!) recipe, but, to be completely fair, much preferred Primrose’ version,
it was much more crisp, without those milky notes that Peggy’s version boasts.

Sky Poker Cupcake

Sky Poker Chips

What did you think of my poker themed cupcakes and cookies? Do they live up to the standards of Sky?! I'd love to know! Lastly, watch this space for (hopefully) some Macarons in the next few days!

Thursday, 11 October 2012

This will be a quick post where I choose to quickly show you some cupcakes that I subtly ordered my sister to bake whilst I was learning away at Uni. It's also the very first post in which I begin a challenge, do you wanna know what the challenge is? Go on, keep reading and you'll find out. Right now and yes, today. It's really cool and interesting, are you ready?

I hereby challenge myself not to use the word 'delicious' in any of my future posts from here on out. I, Emine Hassan, grant anyone who reads the evil, malicious and overused word in any of my posts to personally troll/cyber bully me as punishment. Kapeesh?

Brill.

Now please, drool over these peggy poo cakes and appreciate that the original and delightful (put down those virtual crow bars, its not quite the word!) version that churns out of the parlour like hot cakes - is 1837932873289 times better and 398342938 times likely to be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT RECIPE. But alas, this was close enough, and my sister did a fantastic job. Actually considering eating five for dinner.

Preheat the oven to 170C, or you could do this in ten or so minutes, as the recipe is quite methodical.

Cream the butter and 1 vanilla pod (if you're using extract please dont add this until after you have added the flour, this will stop the alcohol cooking the eggs) until paler in colour, 2/3 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time into the butter, beating as you go along and the mixture is well combined.

Add the flour until just incorporated and then fold in the chopped choco.

Fill each cupcake liner, distributing the batter evenly (this wont be difficult as you'll find yourself short for batter). To get a flat top, only fill the batter two thirds full.

Bake for 14 minutes - make sure not to open the open door and have a peek - especially during the first 5 minutes!

Whilst the cupcakes are baking, prepare the sugar syrup. Pour the water, scraped vanilla pod, and the sugar into a medium-small saucepan and let simmer on a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside.

Take the cakes out of the oven and place on a wire rack, brush each cake with the syrup and then refrigerate the cakes for an hour. Make sure to cover the cakes, you don't want them to taste like fridge!

Prepare the frosting. Cream the butter and then gradually add all of the icing sugar, add the vanilla. Plop in the cheese bit by bit till smooth. Refrigerate the frosting as well, whilst the cupcakes are in there.

For the filling, mash the banana in a small bowl and then add in the caramel, mix together till smooth.

Take the cakes out of the fridge and using a knife/tiny spoon, cut a small well in the middle of the cake.

Put the caramel in a piping bag and then pipe it into the middle of the cake until it's filled.

Sunday, 7 October 2012

If, like me, you've ever wondered about the ‘taste’ of autumn, well, the answer is in this bundt.
You know, like that taste of Christmas you get in your mouth after you step
outside on a premature winters day for the first time and it carries that
indescribable smell/taste combination. How wonderful for us winter babies.

This
was my first ever pumpkin encounter, I enjoyed it, but I think the dogs enjoyed
it more – something about the pumpkin being good for their insides or some
other dog fact that my sister picked up off her iPhone on Google. Saying that, the
taste of this cake was very deep and spicy, it carries that classic flavour
combo of wintry spices – cloves, cinnamon (which I forgot to add like a spaz),
ginger… really warming gingerbread man flavours that bring you right back to
the fireplace with a hot choc.

I can see this cake going well with a tangy
cream cheese glaze, one with the addition of water to make it a satisfying
pouring consistency. None of my recipes
tend to have what this one contains – a secret ingredient! That’s right ladies and gentleman, enter...ROLLED OATS. A thick, un-palpable paste of oats is stirred (not without a
fight of course) into this cake batter and you wouldn’t even know it was there!
But I think it’s necessary cos’ it adds an autumnal extra to this pumpkin
bundt, enjoy :)

Saturday, 6 October 2012

I've noticed a slight pattern when it comes to my ‘months in
food’ – all of it is almost always bought or ready-made! How blasphemous of a
food blogger, to show her small circle of readers what she eats on a day to day
basis and for it not to be homemade?! Appalling. But let’s be honest, who has
the time to eat well and wholesome every day? I certainly don’t, nor does my
budget. September was a lovely and
autumnal month and the start of October has shown that all of these browns,
oranges and deep yellows that have appeared out of nowhere (such as the leafy
table-pieces on the TV) fit RIGHT into place. I thought it only a coincidence
that this month’s Instagram photos were mostly taken under tungsten – esque light.

A feast for two - need I say more? / vanilla cheesecake at the Wolsely / Sainsbury's all butter shortbread

So anyway, on Thursday I stomped along in my high heels, which only ever come out on very special occasions, to the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards! Needless to say I didn't win my category, the blogger who did however, knows her way around the camera like it was made of pastry – which I’m sure she knows plenty about! Poires Au Chocolat – well done, your blog is an inspiration! For those of you unaware of her talent don’t be afraid to click over and drool.

Aside the awards ceremony, I met some fabulous people there that I simply cannot shy away from mentioning! Meg, the lovely lady behind MegsBudgetBoutique, Beth from BeautyThrill and lastly Jenny from 10BlankCanvases. Fashion, beauty and nails – something I know very little about but these three girls pull it off so well that it would be a crime if they weren't nominated by Cosmo. I'm still to find the whereabouts of more pictures of the night, but they will be posted straight away when I do!

It would be rude not to thank Cosmo & Next for everything, especially for the cocktails and never ending goody bag. You can get a full list of the winners here! It would also be rude not to thank who ever nominated me to get that far in the first place, I owe each and every one of you your favourite baked goods.

Monday, 1 October 2012

Donut or doughnut? Doughnut, it's a doughnut. It's not a doughnut because I'm not American, either. It's a doughnut because THESE doughnuts deserve so much more than your average 'donut'. Homer Simpson would bow down to these. He would eat all 30 (ish) that the recipe yields and then some. He would even ask to see the recipe and then Marg would get involved. Hopefully after that Marg would decide to credit the creator of the original, awesome recipe by Sprinkle Bakes. SB might call it a donut, but for me, it's the sort of doughnut that sits on top of those market made donuts and gets icing sugar all over its caster sugar, it would do this as a way of saying to the market donut "I shit all over you".

Another recipe that is a now a solid fixture in my life, if you'd like it to become part of yours too, then please do scan through this step by step guide to perfect doughnuts. I rinsed the original recipe to the absolute max, especially as I made some adaptations, and I think this is necessary if you want to get a good end result, don't be afraid to twice over the method ten hundred times. Just do it.

This is a recipe best left untouched, like the Holy Grail. So please, make these, make them good, eat them all, consider making them again the next night, and most of all thank Sprinkle Bakes for gracing us with such a rich and heavenly ball of yeasty fat to adapt from.

In a bowl, add 2 sachets (14g) of yeast with half the cup of double cream and 1 cup of whole milk and stir till combined using a fork. Add 1 and a half cups of the bread flour and thoroughly stir until near enough all of the lumps have disappeared.

Cover, and set aside to rest for half an hour.

In the meantime, add the rest of the milk and yeast (7g) to the (new) bowl of a freestanding mixer and set on a medium speed.

Throw in the egg yolks, vanilla, vanilla powder and stir for 20 seconds then add all of the dough mixture that you set aside. Stir for a further 20 seconds and then stop.

Add 2 cups of bread flour, salt and sugar and mix on low for 30 seconds.

Stop mixing, add the melted butter until it all starts to come together.

Attach a kneading hook to your mixer and continue to add the last cup of flour to the mixture until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Remember, you don't have to add all of the remaining cup of flour.

Knead for about 1 minute, until smooth and less sticky.

Grease a large bowl with butter and pop the dough inside of the bowl.

You can grease the top of the dough at this point if you want to as well.

Cover with clingfilm or foil and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Line 3 baking trays with clean, floured kitchen towels.

Work your dough on a clean surface, add extra flour to stop it from sticking.

Roll no more than 1 inch thick. Now grab a 72mm (3/4 inch) pastry cutter and a nozzle (1 inch round cutter) and make your doughnut shapes!

Place on the kitchen towels and let prove for a further 40 minutes.

Pour the icing sugar in a big bowl in the mean time.

Have your oil at 180 degrees C, throw in 3 doughnuts in at a time and fry for 1 minute on each side.

Immediately put the doughnuts into the icing sugar and use a spoon to coat them all up in the stuff.